428
C. M.
The land of promise.
There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign,
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
2 There everlasting spring abides,
And never withering flowers;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This heavenly land from ours.
3 Sweet fields, beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.
4 But timorous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea,
And linger, shivering on the brink,
And fear to launch away.
5 O! could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love,
With unbeclouded eyes;
6 Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er;
Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.
Watts.